How anti-genes can make diabetes worse.

Type 2 diabetes was recently declared an epidemic, as its incidence doubled from 1990 to 2005. Scientists have found several new genes that seem to be contributing to the condition and are now hoping this might be the new target of anti-diabetic drugs.

Sugar that we consume with our food gets from our gut to our bloodstream and then from our bloodstream to our body cells. The latter process is regulated by insulin. Sugar can enter the cells through a special door that are normally locked. Insulin is the key, and the lock on the cell’s door is called a receptor. Diabetes can result from either our body not producing insulin so that there’s no key to open the door (which happens in type 1 diabetes) or the locks in the doors get messed up in all cells so no matter how much keys you try – you can’t open the doors (which results in type 2 diabetes). Why the locks get messed up in our body cells is not exactly clear. The recent finding, however, sheds some light on how several genes might be contributing to this.

Scientists concentrated on two genes – miR-103 and miR-107. They aren’t regular genes that encode proteins, they are called micro RNA – small bits of RNA that can stop production of other proteins. They are – in a way – anti-protein genes. Trajkovski and colleagues(1) did two things with these genes in mice tissues – either over-activated them in healthy animals or silenced them in ones that suffer from type 2 diabetes. What seems pretty clear from their results is that the more active these genes are the more diabetes 2-like symptoms the animals showed. And like wise – silencing these genes in diabetic animals reduced the severity of their symptoms. The researchers even went a step further and asked why this might be. As I mentioned, the two genes they focused on do not code proteins but actually can stop the production of some of them. And that was the case here as well – the two genes prevented generation of caveolin 1, a protein which can be thought of as an important element of the lock in the door opened by insulin.

Scientists are obviously excited about this as this opens a whole new venue for treatment of type 2 diabetes. And what is also very exciting for me personally, is that when they set off to find new genes involved in diabetes, they found 5 of those non protein-coding micro RNAs. To keep things simple they only analysed two of them, but even with those two they got significant results. I’m looking forward to some more research on the other three.

1. MicroRNAs 103 and 107 regulate insulin sensitivity